This Week’s Must See Art Events: We’re Throwing a Post-Apocalyptic Dance Party

Tuesday night, we’re throwing a revolutionary dance party at Brooklyn’s Lovegun to celebrate our Fall Fundraiser. The world is a pretty dystopian place—and we need you to join the resistance. We’ll be collecting donations at the door; offering fabulous raffle prizes; and enjoying performances, DJ sets, and more post-apocalypstick than you can possibly scrub off your collar from Trey La Trash, Molly Rhinestones, Orlando Estrada and Ellen Degenerate.

But enough about us—if you survive tomorrow night’s apocalypse, you’re in for a week of solo shows opening, lectures from the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates, open studios at the fantastic Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and several nights to see the weirdest beauty pageant imaginable from Psychic Readings Company. The week ends with an epic four exhibitions closing in Bushwick just after Sunday brunch time.

See? Art F City is always helping you navigate the treacherous wastelands of 2015. Won’t you help us survive?

Tue

Two Coats of Paint Residency

Sue McNally at Two Coats of Paint Residency: Open Studio

Meet the woman behind last year’s self portrait show at Auxiliary Projects “Middle Ass Bad Age”. Tuesday and Wednesday Sue McNally will host an open studio at the Two Coats of Paint Residency program in DUMBO. McNally promises new paintings from her RI studio as she travels from Utah to be here.

Marian Goodman Gallery

Jeff Wall: New Works

Perhaps there is no artist so well known for creating contemporary pseudo-documentary photography (read: staged photography) that references the art historical then Canadian artist Jeff Wall. He’s basically the grandfather of the genre. For that reason we recommend checking out his new show at Marian Goodman Gallery—even though there are no images indicating what will be in the show. New photographs, for sure. Past that, though, we don’t know.

Wed

Con Artist Collective & Gallery

Glitcha

According to members of the collective Glitcha, computer glitches force us to recognize how fragile data networks are; flaws expose an “unstable core”. For this new show, “Glitcha”, members from the collective will show works in a variety of media that illustrate this idea. No specifics yet on what’s in the exhibition, but given the topical nature of the show, it’s probably worth a gander. Not a day goes by when we don’t hear about hacking and system failures and often we’re directly affected; who hasn’t had the freely available software they use malfunction? This show will explore that.

Thu

EFA Center

EFA Open Studios

EFA does a lot for artists in its studio program. They offer subsidized studio rates, regularly bring in critics and curators to the studios and work to promote those in the program. One way they do that is through their Open Studio event, which invites the public to come see what the artists are making in their studios. The studio program hosts over 75 artists working in a wide range of mediums, and in this real estate market, couldn’t be more essential. Just last week, artists were protesting over at the Gowanus Open Studios after many had been forced out of buildings in the neighborhood. This is one place where artists are protected from mass evictions.

P.P.O.W.

535 West 22nd Street, 3rd FloorNew York, NY6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Martha Wilson: Mona/Marcel/Marge

Last year, we asked Rachel Stern to photograph Martha Wilson, nude as a panda. This year, she’s debuting her own pictures on the subject. According to the press release, which cites Wilson, her work and attitude has evolved from what Wilson describes as “the concerns of a young woman to the concerns of an old lady.” Here, she examines the way in which the public gaze projects social values onto women as they grow older. “I’m looking at age and the status of women,” Wilson says, “but we are still in the same absurd state that we were in in the 70s… This is my current response to the predicament that we find ourselves in when born female.”

Paul Kasmin Gallery

Simon Hantaï: Blancs

This show will basically be the definition of process-based abstraction, so if you’re not into that, this isn’t the work for you. But for those who do like it, these works are amongst the most beautiful examples of Simon Hantaï’s pliage technique. Hantaï developed the technique around 1960, in which he folded unstretched canvas, painted the exterior painted and then unfolded the canvas. It’s a little like the technique Tauba Auerbach uses for her paintings, only it was developed forty years earlier.

Tibor de Nagy

Jen Mazza: ///// //////////// A PAINTING IS A MACHINE

Jen Mazza knows how to swing a paint brush. Her paintings, which often use her own photographs, exhibit a masterly approach to light and representation. For this show, she’s blowing up reproductions of digitally printed material. It’s fairly light subject matter, but Mazza’s one of the few artists where her paint handling can seduce you enough not to care for a bit.

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Sheila Hicks

Over the last few years we’ve seen a big return to paintings that either mimic or employ fabric in some way; South First, Mixed Greens and James Cohan have all launched shows of artists exploring this subject. If there’s a root to it all, Sheila Hicks might be it. For over 50 years, she’s been working with fabric to create installations using heaps of hanging material, yarn ball constellations, and more. For this show, she’s been recreating a version of “The Treaty of Chromatic Zones”, a monumental bas-relief of pure pigmented fiber originally realized for Art Basel Unlimited in June of 2015. Those of us who missed Art Basel Unlimited should be happy about the opportunity to see this massive work.

New Museum

Blockchain Horizons

Blockchains are what make virtual currencies like bitcoin work. They are distributed databases, secure and transparent by virtue of peer-to-peer networks that collectively validate each entry and create what is essentially a provenance for each transaction in the life of a bitcoin. And so, they are of great relevance to artists and the art world as a whole and the reason this talk gets a recommendation.

Here’s who’s gonna be there: Rhizome’s Artistic Director Michael Connor moderates a panel comprised of Kevin McCoy, artist, entrepreneur, and founder of current NEW INC member Monegraph, a blockchain-based solution for attributing and distributing art; Hanna Nilsson and Rasmus Svensson who are developing a decentralized platform for publication and distribution of digital texts; and Rachel O’Dwyer, a Dublin-based researcher and curator with a focus on digital currencies.

Schomburg Center

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the Lines

In Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, July 2015), Ta-Nehisi Coates, a National Correspondent for The Atlantic, presents the story of his own awakening to the truth about history and his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences: his immersion into nationalist mythology as a child; his engagement with history, poetry, and love at Howard University; travels to Civil War battlefields and the South Side of Chicago; a journey to France that reorients his sense of the world; and pilgrimages to the homes of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Between the World and Me offers a powerful new framework for understanding America’s history and current crisis, and a transcendent vision for a way forward. A book signing with the author will follow the program.

Fri

Postmasters Gallery

Austin Lee: Nothing Personal

In 2014, the best show Postmasters launched was an exhibition of paintings by Austin Lee, hung salon style, based on quick sketches he made on his iPad. Those works were then painted in acrylic on canvas, but each retains the look of a work that began as an image meant to be seen on a lit screen. The color of these cartoon-like paintings looks bright, and washed out, as if bathed in light.

This show promises more of the same—which is great—plus figurative sculptures that have been 3D printed, textured and painted. We can’t wait.

Sat

JACK

Psychic Readings Company: Miss Chthonic Star Dream Pageant

Ok, we haven’t seen this theatrical production/beauty pageant (in which anyone is welcome to compete) but we’ve heard rave reviews from its run in Baltimore. The Psychic Readings Company, headed by director/curator Ric Royer never fails to surprise and impress. Expect (maybe) the vibe/intensity of an esoteric punk opera being rehearsed at a dive bar’s most awkward karaoke night. Or something completely different, but no less bizarre and worthwhile. Tickets are available for performances on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Sun

Transmitter and Tiger Strikes Asteroid

A 4 Show Mega Closing

This is a joint closing reception for four separate shows spread across the exhibition spaces of two artist-run galleries. Transmitter’s Cost-Benefit Analysis aims to highlight the importance of artist-run initiatives in relation to institutions with a show that’s going to be donated to the Baltimore Museum of Art’s permanent collection. The show features work from several artists that’ve received some AFC love before—Lisa Dillin, Andrew Lauman and John Bohl—as well as Amy Boone-McCreesh, Terence Hannum, Jason Hughes, Jacqueline Maria Milad, and Steve Riddle. It’s a really good lineup, and we’re excited their work is going to the BMA’s collection.

We know less about the shows closing at TSA, but we’re looking forward to checking them out. World is New is a multimedia exhibition focused on the theme of “place” curated by Yin Ho & Andrew Prayzner. It features work by Lawrence Mesich, Nicholas O’Brien, Andrea Wolf, and Brian Zegeer.

As if four closings for the price of one trip to Bushwick weren’t enough, the matinee reception also features a performance from Brian Zegeer and Baby Copperhead titled “Pull My Daisy”. The piece is an improvisational response to video the duo shot in 2008, while squatting in Allen Ginsberg’s dilapidated former East Village apartment.

Louis B. James

Bret Slater

The press release for this show is peppered with often-conflicting personal and pop references to a past that’s not-quite distant enough to generally warrant nostalgia: the “pre-9/11” era, early 00’s garage rock revival, and a sense that the day before yesterday was somehow more sincere, yet more carefree. With that in mind, Bret Slater’s abstract paintings could be viewed as souvenirs for an ephemeral concrete. The compositions and palette recall twee graphic design, but are somewhat awkwardly rendered in impasto paint application, seemingly indicating a desire for something more tangible than an image. Of all the painters who will have work going on view this week, Slater looks to be the one who aspires to an IRL experience a world away from a preview thumbnail. That’s always worth a visit.